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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518514">Perfect Little Freaks: Act 6.6</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOrange/pseuds/AOrange'>AOrange</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Perfect Little Freaks [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Comedy, Drama, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Other, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Romantic Comedy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:46:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,394</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518514</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOrange/pseuds/AOrange</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The world keeps turning despite what you might think. </p><p>Family is what you make it. Whether you're a Strider, a Lalonde, an Egbert, or an English. The best thing about being Dave is that your family is always there when you need them, even if that extended and found family does include all your friends.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dad/Mom, Dave Strider &amp; Karkat Vantas, Jake English/Dirk Strider, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, Terezi Pyrope/Karkat Vantas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Perfect Little Freaks [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/103811</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. [A6.6A0.1]: two o'clock in the a.m.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Acts starting with a 0, like Act 0.1, are what I'm calling interludes. You can skip them, because there's nothing plot crucial, if you don't want to read about everyone stuck at home in 2020. I wasn't going to include it, originally, because it felt weird. But sometimes, fiction can help with tough shit, and 2020 is nothing if not tough shit.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>March, 2020</b>
</p><p>When he'd first signed the contract after well over a decade in his previous position, Jake was convinced he understood the kind of changes that were coming. It meant relocating across the country, uprooting his well established routine, and adapting to the idea of experiencing distinct seasons for the first time since immigrating to California from southern England. It meant new work expectations, weeks on and off shift at a time, and more lecturing at universities in between filming an actual children's television program he'd been hand-selected to host. He'd always enjoyed being busy; the more he had to do, the less time he had alone with an endless stream of thought. </p><p>Everything had been an almost unbelievable experience since first moving to New York state. Hal had far more space than before to roam, his guarding instincts keeping him occupied for hours at a time patrolling fence lines and barking at birds that dared fly over his territory. Dirk was more settled than he'd ever seemed in San Diego, his time spent so focused on music that he'd put out an album the previous October after years in retirement. He'd remodeled over half the house in between, and even managed to quit smoking for the longest continuous time since he was fourteen years old. </p><p>Then, suddenly, the world had stopped. </p><p>"Sorry, I've got you all on mute so I can get through everything," Jake said, frowning slightly as he adjusted all his open windows across two monitors to find the source of the alert. "Oh, there you are, I see you. Okay, could you repeat the question?"</p><p>The question came through more clearly the second time, the voice tinny as it carried from an undergraduate's childhood bedroom located, most likely, at least five states away.</p><p>"Is that Dave Strider?"</p><p>Bewildered, Jake fumbled for an answer that refused to come to mind as quickly as he needed it; it was bad enough that the question had no relation to the differences between working as a regular veterinarian and an exotic animals veterinarian, but he was absolutely floored by being thrown such an unexpected question.</p><p>Still struggling to find the right words to respond, he jumped when a voice spoke up from somewhere over his shoulder.</p><p>"Sup, Pops?"</p><p>"Christ on a fucking pogo stick, what are you doing back there other than hovering ominously?"</p><p>"Tea," Dave said, holding out the mug. "It's ten thirty."</p><p>"While I appreciate your effortless punctuality, I'm a little occupied and can't indulge in any of your little games right now, unfortunately," Jake said. He swiveled his chair around just far enough to accept the mug and sipped curiously; perfectly sugared. It would have been suspicious in any other circumstance but he'd been lecturing for an hour already and morning tea time called for morning tea.</p><p>"No games," Dave said with a shrug, the unwanted movement giving The Mayor a reason to meow loudly from his shoulders. "Oh, jokes, it's also cookie time," he added with a grin, producing a sleeve of Oreos from the pocket of his sweatpants. "You want me to leave the pack, or what?"</p><p>"Leave it," Jake said. "I've got a drawer full of biscuits in here but none of them are Oreos. Now, skedaddle. No, wait, hang on," he added suddenly, turning back to the virtual lecture hall. "How do <i>you</i> know who <i>he</i> is?"</p><p>"My dad's famous," Dave said, leaning over Jake's shoulders to examine the screen. He gave a quick wave and grinned into the camera, settling his chin down on Jake's head. "Obviously, but also like, YouTube and shit. Did you know I'm fucking huge on TikTok right now?"</p><p>"Well it's been a riot catching up with you, but I'm in the middle of something here so let's talk about clocks later," Jake said, gesturing from Dave to his screen and back again. "And don't you have work to do?"</p><p>"Gotta take breaks or I'll need a hand transplant before I'm thirty."</p><p>"Alright, alright, go annoy someone else."</p><p>"Later, Pops," Dave said as he planted a smacking kiss on Jake's cheek. "Hey, if I stay can I get course credits?"</p><p>"I don't think the Internet School of Pure Rubbish accepts Zoology credits."</p><p>"Oh, harsh," Dave frowned. "See ya," he said, giving a mock salute towards the screen before he slipped out of the trophy room as silently as he'd apparently entered.</p><p>"Well with that unanticipated calamity of an interruption aside, where was I?" Jake said out loud, mostly to himself as he reorganised the windows on his desktop once again. "And no, I will most definitely not be taking questions about my disaster of a step-son, my apparently famous husband, or anything else that isn't directly related to the purpose of this lecture. Yes, you?"</p><p>"Can we see your dog, Professor?"</p><p>Jake sighed. </p><p>"That's only tangentially related to the purpose, so if you stay back after class I'll go and dig him out of his igloo," he said. "Now, oh, fuck sticks, okay. Difficulty encountered in trying to perform a standard check up on something like, say, a jaguar compared to a house cat."</p><p>After spending the last ten minutes of his lecture in the backyard, watching Hal guard the snowblower he'd taken a disconcertingly strong liking to, Jake plugged his laptop back into charge and drained the last two mouthfuls of cold tea. </p><p>The house was oddly quiet, considering just how full it was of people. </p><p>He made his way to the kitchen and switched on the coffee maker, filling the filter basket with ground beans that had just appeared a fortnight earlier; he had the feeling they were the fancy kind of coffee beans, the type sold in small batches weighed out by the pound by a barista with tiny glasses and an even tinier moustache. As the coffee brewed, temporarily disguising the kitchen as a big city cafe, he made himself another cup of tea and added an extra half teaspoon of sugar for good luck. </p><p>The coffee he poured black, into a very specific mug, and picked up in his free hand. He could hear voices in the good dining room as he passed through the living room but didn't stop to interrupt. Carefully, so he didn't spill from either mug, he announced himself rather than raising a hand to the mostly-closed upstairs bedroom door. </p><p>"Knock knock," he said brightly, bumping the door fully open with a hip. </p><p>Dave was slouched over in the window seat, his spine so curved it looked like the least comfortable position Jake could have imagined if asked. He looked over when the door opened and immediately shifted, bringing his knees up to stow the iPad and pencil under his legs, as well as dragging the over-ear headphones down to rest around his neck.</p><p>"I totally didn't mean to derail your class," Dave said as he accepted the oversized <i>Frozen</i> mug with an almost sheepish grin. "I was gonna sneak in and out like a fucking ninja but I thought if I just put your tea down you'd see it and think it was cold then we'd be dealing with second-degree esophagus burns instead of me just apologising for being a jackass."</p><p>"It was only a mild delay, no real derailment on your part," Jake said. He sat down on the bench next to Dave, his back to the glass windowpane, and turned to look over at him while they talked. "What're you working on now?" </p><p>"Uh," Dave paused while he took another too-hot sip of his coffee. "Comics for John's birthday next week. I blocked out two days but I might need three. I don't know yet, I only just started. Did you show 'em the dog?"</p><p>"The dog is the one responsible for all of today's lecture derailment," Jake pointed out with a small frown. "What time do you knock off for the day?"</p><p>"I'm flexible," Dave replied almost suspiciously. "Why?"</p><p>"Fancy running the gauntlet into town? You and your lot eat more than anticipated and we're running low on everything but the ramen you all brought up."</p><p>"Can we get ice cream?"</p><p>"You can buy whatever you want, you've got a job," Jake scoffed. "I was planning to go into the big Walmart and last time I checked they stock an endless variety of the stuff."</p><p>"Give me ten to finish up this panel?" Dave said, knocking back another mouthful of his coffee. </p><p>"I'll meet you downstairs," Jake said, patting Dave's knee as he stood up. "Oh, you do know the lights are off, don't you?"</p><p>"Yeah, I'm only doing lineart, I can get by with like, even minimal backlighting until it's time to colour," Dave explained as he dragged the iPad back out from under his legs. "This panel, take a piss, get geared up for the apocalypse, yeah?"</p><p>"I'll organise the gas masks."</p><p>"I'm guessing that's a joke, but you totally have some gas masks in the attic or something, right?"</p><p>"Let a fellow have some secrets, won't you?"</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>John frowned up at the ceiling. He was sitting cross-legged in an old swivel chair that had long since lost most of its padding, neck stretched back over the head rest as he spun in circles.<p>He'd been working for hours. At least, he'd been trying to work but there was just so much to distract him in the office without even taking the entire internet into account. </p><p>His ankle shot out to stop the chair from spinning and his foot wedged itself up on the edge of the work bench for comfort as he dragged his iPad into his lap. The sudden burst of inspiration only produced enough words to fill a few lines before he realised he was stuck again.</p><p>Huffing to himself, John stared over at the wall. He'd spent a lot of time staring at the wall over the last few weeks, but unlike all the instances where he'd spent hours just staring at walls in the past, it wasn't because he was filled with a crippling depression.</p><p>He was staring because there was so much to take in.</p><p>Dirk's writing wall was covered almost entirely in scribbles; half-finished song lyrics, doodles that would become the basis of inlay art, and temporary track listings. Lower down were drawings that had been done by Dave as a kid, and in some places there was evidence of the wall being used as a whiteboard to teach time-telling. Dave's heights were marked on the back of the door, inked over the paint even more regularly than John remembered Dad marking his own height in the utility room. </p><p>It was distracting. A little bit inspiring in a weird way, but mostly distracting. John frowned again and reached over to play a series of notes on his keyboard. They weren't the right notes. He didn't know what the right ones were yet, but he knew the ones he'd played were wrong.</p><p>"Whatcha doin', Johnny Bravo?" </p><p>John spun his chair around again to face Roxy, who was resting one shoulder up against the door jamb with a huge smile plastered on her face. </p><p>"Does that say<i>mummification</i>?" </p><p>He pointed to one of Dirk's old notes on the wall, halfway between the two of them.</p><p>"Yeah, probs," she said with a shrug. "You gotta remember the guy is off the charts insane in his own way, then it's like, oh yeah that makes sense," Roxy said. "Anyway, you?"</p><p>"Writing a song, duh," he grinned. </p><p>"What's it called?"</p><p>"I dunno yet, but the working title is <i>please don't tell Jake but I think I left some milk in the fridge and it's definitely gonna be rank by the time I can throw it out</i>."</p><p>"Yeah, that's a mouthful. Anyway, I'm gonna make a grilled cheese for lunch if you want in," Roxy said offhandedly, examining her nails as if she wasn't even paying attention to his answer.</p><p>"Yeah, the milk is already gross anyway, weren't you listening?" John said with a huge grin. </p><p>He disentangled himself from his headphone cable and slid his phone off the desk before he stood up to follow Roxy up to the kitchen. </p><p>"How was your meeting?"</p><p>"Frustrating as fuck, John. I'm working with a bunch of people who wouldn't know how to work remotely if it was the only option left in the work arsenal."</p><p>"Like Dad," John laughed as he trailed a few steps behind her. When she started taking pans out and fiddling with gas knobs, he beelined for the fridge to grab the cheese. </p><p>"<i>Worse</i> than Dad," she said, flashing him an over-exaggerated wink. "At least Dad's figured how to mute himself when he's talking shit about someone. Oh, speaking of," she added in a way that indicated the topic was meant to be the focus of the conversation. "He's totally approved to work from home until further notice so he'll finally be here tomorrow!"</p><p>"Wow, rude, he didn't tell me?" John asked, feigning sarcasm as he slapped two slices of cheese onto the bread and passed it over to Roxy. "Nah that's awesome, for real. It means that I don't have to FaceTime him and just see the TV instead anymore."</p><p>"He's trying, Johnny Rockets. It's not nice to make fun of old people on Facebook."</p><p>John scrunched up his nose.</p><p>"Oh gross, my dad's an old people on Facebook!"</p><p>"Ooh, next song title," Roxy beamed as she tossed the two finished sandwiches into the pan with an extra knob of butter. "So what exciting adventures do you wanna get up to today?"</p><p>"Well I'm gonna have a grilled cheese and then I have to go and teach at Zoom University," John said. He sat down at the kitchen table, in Dave's seat just to annoy him, and sent a photo of the smallest crime in the world to the group chat. "Which is dumb because no one was allowed to take the grand pianos home so everyone is using keyboards and we all just keep turning on the drumkit setting to see who can make the worst noise?"</p><p>"Is it you?" Roxy asked eagerly, checking under one of the sandwiches to see if it was ready to flip. "How much is a grand piano? We could probably cram one in here somewhere if you really want."</p><p>"Steinway don't even have prices on their website, so," John said pointedly.</p><p>Roxy let out a low whistle in response.</p><p>"So what, we're talking like fifty grand here?"</p><p>"The one I played at my last recital is worth over one sixty."</p><p>"New keyboard stand it is," Roxy said, sliding the grilled cheeses onto plates. "One sixty? Seriously?"</p><p>"Yeah, that's not even the fanciest one we have, one time I touched one and got told not to touch it again so I guess it's worth a lot more," he said. "Do you wanna play Stardew later?"</p><p>"Fuck yeah I do," she said, holding out her sandwich to toast against his. "When'll you be home from school?"</p><p>"Three?" John guessed, after a failed first attempt to bite into his oozy sandwich. "I guess it depends if I'm winning the annoying keyboard noises or not."</p><p>"Fabulous-o, my meetings finish at two thirty."</p><p>"Cool. Hey, so do we have to lock Dad up when he gets here?"</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>It had taken her the better part of three days to start feeling like she could manage to get around the house on her own. There were stairs, much longer distances between the things she needed than at home, and the occasional warped or loose floorboard that made her jump every time she unexpectedly stepped on one. More than once she'd walked into a door expecting it to be open, causing Jake to apologise over and over and insist on checking her forehead for bumps. Luckily, Hal's size made it impossible for him to roam the house silently, and even better, his instincts kicked in around her and he'd started barking to get her attention. They'd let her set up a makeshift study in the fancy dining room where there was space to spread out and organise everything she needed to finish the semester. Things were okay, considering.<p>"We have a very big and very important thing to talk about and yes, before you try to weasel your way out of it again, we do need to talk about it right now."</p><p>When Karkat didn't respond, she realised that her dramatic entrance to the bedroom had been foiled by headphones, yet again.</p><p>Terezi rolled her eyes and moved forward, scratching her nails gently through his hair and dipping the motion below the collar of his sweatshirt.</p><p>"We need to talk," she said when he tipped his head back to look up at her; she felt the top of his head lean back to rest against her stomach.</p><p>"Fuck."</p><p>"That is the general idea."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>He was confused; whatever he'd been doing had held his full attention until she'd interrupted.</p><p>"Are you busy?"</p><p>"I'm writing for BuzzFeed, so no, I'm not busy," Karkat said, leaning into her touch. "Did you really just try to pull a <i>we need to talk</i> on me?"</p><p>"We do need to talk," Terezi said pointedly. "And I need you to listen when I tell you that you are being insufferable and you need to get over yourself and your weird and dumb hangups, and now is the perfect time to do that."</p><p>"I know you think it's obvious what you're talking about," he said. "But I've got countless dumb fucking hangups so you'll need to be more specific than that if you want me to get the point you're trying to make."</p><p>Specific? She could be specific. </p><p>"The one where you have been unreasonably convinced that everyone is just waiting to overhear us having sex."</p><p>Her left hand, still running across the skin under his sweater, felt his breath catch, only slightly, but it was enough to know she had his full attention.</p><p>"How's that unreasonable?"</p><p>His voice cracked. It was cute how fast he ended up flustered.</p><p>"Because Dave sleeps with headphones on at least six night a week, his dad is maybe five rooms away, the dog sleeps with them, and the Mayor has unfortunately witnessed your ass more than once," Terezi said. "And if you are worried about people hearing then now is probably the best time to avoid that because there is only one other person home and he is in the basement."</p><p>"Counterpoint," Karkat said, a hand reaching up to push her glasses back up from the tip of her nose. "That's a totally normal hangup I've had since I learnt about sex so you're not special in this scenario."</p><p>"Wow, rude," she replied, pinching the skin over his collarbone just hard enough to be annoying. "You are still a terrible liar, you know. I know you're being extra weird about it because we are in your teen idol's house."</p><p>"Wrong, I'm being weird about it because I'm always weird about it," Karkat said. </p><p>"I know, that is exactly why I accused you of being extra weird."</p><p>"Here," he said. She felt his fingers in her hair, both hands pulling her down into a slightly awkward kiss that was far less romantic that he'd probably intended, but she appreciated the effort nonetheless. "Can you keep your pants on until tonight?"</p><p>"Was your Spiderman upside down kiss intended to drop them immediately? Because it did not work."</p><p>"Yes or no?"</p><p>"Do you want to schedule a specific time while we are talking about it?" Terezi asked sarcastically, her weight still leaning over his shoulders. "I am free at one forty-three in the morning. How is your diary?"</p><p>"Totally fucking empty," he replied, dialling up the snark from her tone. "Does the bedroom work for you, or do you want to pick somewhere more exciting, like the garage so I can freeze my literal ass off?"</p><p>"Now you are just trying to be antagonistic," she frowned. "Are you sure you do not want to go for it right now?"</p><p>"Yeah, very fucking sure," Karkat said. She felt his shoulders tense as his head turned back to his laptop screen, and she knew he was working on another fluff piece that wouldn't earn him any real writing credibility. "I've been weird about it," he added after a moment.</p><p>"Yes," Terezi said simply, fingers raking through his wirey hair, brushing it back from his face. </p><p>"Since we're using the worst cliches in the English language today and you already hit me with a <i>we need to talk</i>, here's one for you," he said, head drooping forward under her repeated touch. "It's not you, it's me."</p><p>"It is definitely you. You have hardly been sleeping and are scraping the bottom of the creative barrel."</p><p>"I went to college for this," he said. The sound of his hand hitting the desktop was enough to tell her he'd gestured towards whatever was on his screen. </p><p>"Imagine if you had majored in Computer Science like you were supposed to," she added. "You would still be underemployed and suffering from a creative deficit, but you would be doing it with even more debt."</p><p>"Thanks," Karkat said bluntly. "Sorry, for what it's worth."</p><p>"Your apology is accepted," she said, leaning down to plant a kiss on his forehead. "Conditionally, of course. I am expecting you to be on time for our very important meeting at one forty-three in the morning."</p><p>"Meet you in the garage."</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>For as much as he'd struggled with the concept of being an overprotective parental figure over the years, the elusive Dad Card had come into existence to keep him from stepping over the line. It was something he'd used less and less as time went on, until suddenly, for what felt like a more than acceptable reason, he'd pulled the Dad Card and given Dave as long as it took him to drive down to the city to pack for an extended stay upstate. <p>He'd piled all four kids, the Mayor, and an assortment of their belongings - including keyboards and desktop computers - into the truck and driven them back to the house. He hadn't even needed to bring up the possibility of having them all in the house for an indeterminate amount of time; over the news one morning, the look on Jake's face said it all.</p><p>The kitchen was quiet when he stepped back inside from the concrete patio, sliding the lock closed behind him. With the only light coming from the exhaust over the stovetop, he set out two glasses and opened one of the top cabinets to glance over the collection of various liquors. As he unscrewed the cap of a bottle, he paused, and glanced over towards the doorway through to the living room, the sound of heavy footfalls trying to sneak across the carpet far louder than their owner intended. </p><p>"Fuck," Karkat swore, taking half a step backwards, as if disappearing from view would erase the memory of him standing in the doorway.</p><p>"Relax, it's just me," Dirk said as he poured two neat whiskeys into the glasses. "Need anything?"</p><p>"Just thirsty."</p><p>"At two thirty in the morning?"</p><p>"Speak for yourself," Karkat said, eyebrows narrowing at the accusation.</p><p>Dirk noticed his eye line flick towards the two glasses on the counter, then to his tattoos, and back to his face again.</p><p>"Thirsty," he replied, gesturing to the glasses before returning the bottle to its shelf. "Jesus, relax, would you? You're wound up tighter than the cat ten minutes to dinner time. You want a drink?"</p><p>"Not that," Karkat said. He jerked the fridge open and glanced inside, eventually pulling out the bottle of strawberry lemonade.</p><p>Dirk slid a glass across the island for him and waited.</p><p>When it looked like he was struggling to find a way to ask the question, and not a second before, Dirk grabbed a second glass and slid it across to join the first. </p><p>"Clean sheets are in the linen closet near the bathroom," he said, picking up the two glasses of whiskey to make his exit through the living room and across into Jake's office.</p><p>He leant back against the door, gently, until he was sure the latch caught behind him.</p><p>Jake, dozing on the couch, lazily tipped his head back over the arm at the sound of him reentering the room. </p><p>"You went outside like that?"</p><p>Dirk laughed at the question, softly, leaning over to kiss him just as gently; once, then again, the second lingering until he pulled back just enough to reply.</p><p>"Who was going to complain?"</p><p>"I'm less interested about the look and more concerned for your various appendages," Jake said, swatting at his bare chest. He accepted the glass of whiskey when Dirk held one out to him, resting it on his stomach. "It's quite literally freezing outside."</p><p>"Years of training," Dirk replied. With his one free hand, he dragged the armchair around and closer to the couch before sinking down into the plush upholstery with his own glass and a heavy sigh. </p><p>He kicked off the borrowed slippers and lifted his feet up onto the couch, tucking them under the blanket along with Jake's to warm back up; he took a slow sip of his whiskey and let his head fall back so he was staring up at the ornate cornices that circled the room.</p><p>"Sweatpants in thirty degrees?" Jake questioned.</p><p>"Totally acceptable in this part of the country," he said. "It's lucky I went with the sweatpants at all, we got busted," he went on with a laugh, lifting his head back up. "Not by Dave, so we're still coasting on a hundred percent lifetime success rate of not being caught by the spawn."</p><p>"That we know of," Jake said. He slid up the couch, just enough, so he could take a drink from his glass. </p><p>"That we know of," Dirk conceded. "And thus the parental status quo remains unchanged."</p><p>"Poor Karkat. I assume it was Karkat?"</p><p>"Yeah, and judging from his reaction and lack of anything but sweatpants, clearly I busted him post-fuck as much as he caught me."</p><p>"You didn't draw attention to the fact, did you? You know he's a shambles at the best of times," Jake said sympathetically. </p><p>"Might've reminded him where to find clean sheets?"</p><p>Dirk grinned sheepishly.</p><p>"Vile, you are."</p><p>"Not what you said twenty minutes ago."</p><p>"Hey now, it's rather poor form to make fun of a man for what he says in an intimate moment, isn't it?" Jake pointed out as he finally sat up properly on the couch, shifting his own legs to better accommodate Dirk's. "Really what you're telling me here is that we could've just stayed in bed after all, hm?"</p><p>"Yeah, but then I never would've been able to tick <i>have a fuck under the watchful eyes of no less than four taxidermied wild animals</i> off my bucket list."</p><p>"That was <i>not</i> on your bucket list."</p><p>"But was it on yours?" Dirk asked, eyebrow raised.</p><p>"See? Vile."</p><p>"That doesn't answer the question, English," he said, laughing, as he took another drink.</p><p>"I think we've covered everything on my list of filth to try in a lifetime, and more, thank you very much," Jake said, challenging Dirk's raised eyebrow with one of his own. "And I have to say, since you insist, that the taxidermy surprisingly didn't do much for me."</p><p>"Bullshit."</p><p>"Not a word of a lie," he said. "And I don't know about you, but I think if I spend the rest of the night on the couch I won't be able to move tomorrow and yes, it would be the fault of the couch and not what transpired in this office not half an hour ago," Jake went on, his comment cutting in before Dirk could say anything else. "So would you like to finish your drink here, or upstairs?"</p><p>"Upstairs it is," Dirk said. "You're just going to make a run for it like that, I assume?"</p><p>"I might."</p><p>"In that case, after you," he said, waving the hand holding his whiskey towards the door.</p><p>"You're so fucking predictable, you know that?" Jake said with a laugh as he stood up from the couch.</p><p>"Predictable, consistent, either way I have the greatest view in the world right now," Dirk said as he followed Jake out of the office, hanging back a few steps, just because he could.</p><p>He took a slow drink, switched off the lamp, and followed. </p><p>The third step from the top creaked twice, first under Jake's weight then his, as they silently made their way back through the dark hallways of the manor towards the bedroom. The guest room at the top of the stairs was quiet, its door cracked open just far enough to let the animals in or out. Dave's door, around the corner, was closed to presumably keep out the morning light. </p><p>The unexpected woosh of the toilet flushing broke through the night and instead of making a run for the far end of the corridor, Jake inexplicably pressed himself up against the wall where he would, hopefully, be half hidden by the drapery.</p><p>Dirk was fighting a losing battle with every fibre of his being to hold back the outrageous laugh he could feel bubbling up deep inside his chest at the sight. </p><p>When the bathroom door opened seconds later, a snort slipped out as Jake, draped in shadows, tried to sink even closer in against the wall.</p><p>Terezi's head snapped around towards the source of the noise and Dirk failed to stifle the impending outburst any longer.</p><p>"Shit, sorry, it's just me," he said, holding his glass up against his chest to try and avoid spilling liquor on the carpet. </p><p>"What time is it?" Terezi asked; Dirk stepped out of the way when she started running a hand along the wall as she moved back towards the guest room.</p><p>"'bout three," he replied.</p><p>"Fuck that," she said through a loud yawn. "Later."</p><p>It felt like hours before she reached the door at the top of the stairs. It wasn't until it clicked shut behind her that Jake dared to move from his place behind the curtains, and Dirk closed the bedroom door behind them both as quietly as he could manage. </p><p>"I'm almost tempted to go back out there with a flashlight and see if there's an imprint of your bare ass on the wallpaper," he said, still snickering as he set his whiskey down on the bedside table. He changed out of his sweatpants and into a clean pair of underwear, finally settling down next to Jake who was already, somewhat disappointingly, sitting under the comforter. "I'll need to frame it if there is."</p><p>"And here I was just hours ago wondering how you were going to deliver on the promise of a wild night," Jake said, leaning over to press a series of short kisses to the corner of Dirk's mouth. "And yet a wild night it's been."</p><p>"Not bad for having a full house, huh?" Dirk said as he reached over for his whiskey. "You left your glasses in the office."</p><p>"Left my underpants there as well," Jake grinned, picking his own drink back up as well. "Cheers," he said, clinking the rim of his glass against Dirk's before taking a sip.</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>Everything Dave knew about himself pointed to the fact he was meant to live in the city; he'd known it for as long as he could remember. From the first time he'd seen the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan with his own eyes, strapped into the back seat of his mom's minivan, it was the place something inside knew he needed to be. He'd spent three and a half years at an art college downtown, right in the heart of everything that made New York what it was, before moving to Brooklyn where everything had immediately felt right.<p>But no matter how at home he felt surrounded by the constant ebb and flow of the city, how right everything seemed, after six years he still struggled to sleep when the city never did.</p><p>Visiting home, buried deep in the vast emptiness of upstate New York, he slept better than he ever did in the city without too much codeine coursing through his veins. No matter what he did, there was always the inevitable taxi honk, or upstairs neighbour thumping on the floorboards above, just as he was drifting off. </p><p>Hope was even quieter than Mom's house. </p><p>Covered in feet of snow that dampened any noise, the manor and its acres of lawn and woods fell silent as soon as the sun began to disappear in the late afternoons. Occasionally, there was the cracking of twigs under the feet of deer, or the rustling of raccoons as they sped across the roof. </p><p>No car horns, no neighbours, no need to fall asleep with his best noise cancelling headphones clamped down hard over his ears to block out the world.</p><p>The first time he woke up, he figured it was a dad. Probably Jake, if Hal's vague interest from the floor was anything to go by. Then it was the Mayor deciding he wanted to join the feline adaptation of the New York Marathon, at least until Dave grabbed him during a lap across the bed and swaddled him in the comforter to calm down. Then came something from across the hall, a noise he couldn't quite identify but was familiar enough he knew better than to investigate. Muffled sounds from the floor below, unidentifiable, for the best. Stairs creaking. The toilet flushing. Another dad, this time a laugh. </p><p>Finally, the fourth time he'd been woken up, it was because of the dog. </p><p>"Oh, come on," Dave groaned into his pillow. "Hey, Siri, what's the time?" </p><p>He groaned again, rolling over onto his back when the iPhone confirmed that it was just barely after five o'clock in the morning. </p><p>Hal was standing beside the bed, tail wagging, and whining quietly for attention as Dave slowly woke up. A hand reached out to scratch the dog between the ears in an attempt to placate him, but Hal only whined again when Dave tried to turn back over. </p><p>"Gimme a sec here," he mumbled, stretching out each of his limbs in turn, elbows and knees clicking as they straightened out. As he fumbled around in the dark for clothes - sweatpants, hoodie, fluffy novelty socks covered in lizards - Hal followed him around the room complaining even louder than before. "We're going, dude," Dave said, swiping his phone up off the charger and his glasses from the side table.</p><p>When he opened the door, Hal bolted out of his bedroom, around the corner, and disappeared downstairs. By the time Dave made it to the kitchen, the dog was already sitting by the side door, tail thumping impatiently against the linoleum.</p><p>"Have a nice shit, bro," he said as he unlocked the door.</p><p>Jake had explained Hal's morning routine a few weeks earlier, when Terezi had asked why he'd been outside for so long; first he had to check on all the toys he had outside, including the flat soccer ball that apparently still lived in the garbage since it had been thrown out four months earlier. Then came the once-over of the fence that only kept him in because Dirk had trained him not to jump it, then finally, locate a suitable bathroom spot.</p><p>Dave snapped a coffee pod into the machine and shuffled to the downstairs bathroom, running a second pod into his mug when he came back; he thought about adding a third, but the lure of a second double when he was finished with the first won out. </p><p>He sat up at the island with his coffee, scrolling through the seemingly endless notifications on his phone, and waited for Hal to return.</p><p>He had no idea where The Mayor had gone after his attempt at swaddling had failed, but the soft tinkling of kibble into two bowls was enough to summon him from somewhere upstairs. Dave snapped a photo of both Hal and The Mayor devouring their breakfast, put his phone down, then picked it up again when he realised that being awake for most of the night had left him hungrier than he'd been in weeks.</p><p>He set his phone down on the counter, propped up on a custom Di-Stri popsocket, and went live. </p><p>"Sup, it's maybe five thirty in the morning which is totally the optimal time for this shit but fuck it, I'm up, you're up, let's make a batch of retribution pancakes and see who I wake up first," he said to his own image on the phone screen. "Can we get from here to me shoving an entire pancake in my mouth uninterrupted? Or am I gonna get my ass handed to me for being a complete shithead? Let's find out on today's episode of <i>Dave didn't get enough sleep so he's out to invoke the wrath of everyone who's stuck at home with him</i>."</p><p>He only made it as far as letting the batter rest before he heard footsteps in the living room.</p><p>With a quick grin into the lens he moved closer to the phone, leaning his elbows on the counter as he hunched over to talk directly to the stream.</p><p>"Eighteen minutes. Not bad considering. Later," he said, reaching out to quickly end the Instagram broadcast. "Pops," he added, greeting Jake with a nod as he reached over to turn the electric kettle on. </p><p>"Good morning," Jake said as he put his hands on either side of Dave's head, then pressed a kiss into his hair. "And what has you awake and experimenting so early in the day?"</p><p>"The unholy noise I was subjected to at like two o'clock in the a.m.," Dave replied, stepping aside when Jake nudged him out of the way.</p><p>"Oh, well, that was. Uh, oh, fucking <i>fiddlesticks</i>, we weren't even that loud," Jake spluttered, throwing up his hands in disbelief. "Were we?"</p><p>Dave grinned.</p><p>"I meant that your dog sneezes louder than John's dad and that's saying something because the guy is like, all about those proper dad sneezes, you know? What are you talking about?"</p><p>"Well," Jake said, throwing a tea bag into his mug. "In that case, if you must know, we were simply considering the best way to rearrange the furniture in my office."</p><p>"At two in the morning, sure," Dave said as he walked around to the fridge to grab the milk. "Totally normal, Pops."</p><p>"Oh, come on, surely you've known me long enough to know that's a plausible falsehood," Jake said. </p><p>"Okay, good point," Dave admitted as he plonked the milk down next to the bubbling kettle. "But you were boning."</p><p>"Yes, Dave. I had sex with you father, at two o'clock in the morning, in my office," Jake sighed. </p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"What do you mean why? You know why."</p><p>"What? Why are you guys sneaking around like fourteen year olds who just discovered that if you type boobs into Google, surprise, surprise, you get pictures of boobs," Dave clarified. "I'm twenty three, Pops, I know why people fuck."</p><p>"Only when they're over thirty, married, and love each other very much," Jake said, reaching over to pat Dave's cheek. "There, we've officially had the talk."</p><p>"Cool, but Bro already gave me a book and told me to read it."</p><p>"Typical."</p><p>"He let me ask questions, don't get me wrong. It was a totally age-appropriate Q and A session, I asked him about kissing."</p><p>"And?"</p><p>"And I never looked at him the same after he told me he'd totally been kissing people with his literal mouth, gross," Dave said. "For like three years or something anyway, then it was awesome for a while until it circled back around to gross. Anyway, not that I'm gonna change the subject now or anything, but why are you awake?"</p><p>"Because it's around six o'clock in," Jake said as he slid the milk back over; Dave picked it up and made a big show of putting it back in the fridge, returning to find Jake staring into the bowl of batter. "Are we having pancakes then?"</p><p>"Yeah. You guys have the real maple syrup, yeah?"</p><p>"Yes, the other cupboard, next to the jam I think. Last time I saw it, anyway."</p><p>Jake waved a hand around, at first just to indicate the cupboard he was talking about, but changed tactics part way through the gesture to straighten out the flyaway hairs that were caught up under the arm of Dave's Aviators.</p><p>"Oh fuck, you've like, doused your hands in bleach, right? I don't need Bro's ass cooties all up in my hair," Dave frowned as he slammed a large frying pan down onto the stovetop. </p><p>"Careful now, you're treading into treacherous accusational territory and I might accidentally say something you'd rather not hear," Jake said. "Or have I already crossed that bridge over the line of whatever it is we're calling this conversation?"</p><p>Dave watched him knock back a pill with his tea before realising that the teabag was still floating in the mug; his fingers dipped into the near-boiling drink to fish out the bag, and tossed it into the sink to be dealt with later. </p><p>By the third week into his extended stay upstate, he'd realised that an early-morning Jake was more often than not a very different person to the one he'd known for most of a decade; he'd always assumed it was the excitement of having him visit, or he'd slept late enough it wasn't a thing he'd noticed but the threat of too much information accidentally slipping out was real, at least until the Adderall kicked in.</p><p>"So, pancakes," Dave said, starting to pour the batter into the spitting pan. "Are we going all out or just half-assing the most important meal of the day like chumps?"</p><p>As it turned out, first-thing-in-the-morning Jake was more than willing to go all out with the pancakes. He scavenged the fridge and freezer for various add-ins and toppings, rifled through cupboards for spreads, and piled it all in the middle of the island. They were somewhere around their fifth experimental pancake each, Dave eating his like a taco so the once-frozen berries stayed wrapped inside, when he heard footsteps.</p><p>"Oh my God," he said through a mouthful of his breakfast, staring across the kitchen. "You guys did it, too."</p><p>Karkat scowled. </p><p>"Get fucked," he said, flicking the tip of Dave's ear as he walked past on his way to the coffee machine. </p><p>"How could you possibly know that?" Jake asked incredulously. He was eating a pancake filled with chocolate chips and slathered in marmalade, but the fact he was using cutlery put him miles ahead of Dave in the decorum department.</p><p>"You can't just ask how a guy knows when his best bro slash roommate slash dude gets lucky, Pops," he scoffed. </p><p>He looked over his shoulder when he heard the sound of a mug hitting the countertop far more roughly than it should have; Karkat was staring back at him, wide-eyed.</p><p>"What do you mean, <i>too</i>?"</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. [A6.6A0.2]: feral, but not in a good way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which there are tantrums, birthdays, and fiascoes.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>April/May, 2020</b>
</p><p> "You know, I'm starting to think I might actually be a terrible writer with no real inclination or ambition to ever push myself into seeking out genuine publication."</p><p>Rose, with her legs stretched out under the coffee table, lay back onto the carpet of the living room floor and let one of the cats jump onto her stomach.</p><p>She scratched poor Robert Pattinson behind the ears as he settled down on her chest and looked up to her wife for sympathy.</p><p>"You're not a terrible writer," Kanaya said from up on the couch, idly flipping a page in her book. "You're just lazy and have no tangible sense of self worth unless it's directly tied to your achievements. In this particular case, your lack of self worth is more evident because of your equal lack of achievement."</p><p>"Just because that all happens to be true, it doesn't mean it's a nice thing to say."</p><p>"Oh, I'm sorry, are you having a serious crisis today, or were you just complaining?" Kanaya asked calmly, as she finally looked up from her reading.</p><p>Rose sighed.</p><p>"Just complaining," she resigned. "Would you believe that I posted a six thousand word chapter for the first time in three months earlier, and what do I have to show for my efforts?"</p><p>"A cat's arsehole?"</p><p>"Two, actually," she said, lifting the second cat up from the carpet onto her stomach to join the first. "I have nothing, by the way. Nothing."</p><p>"And how long ago did you post this multi-thousand word chapter?"</p><p>Kanaya had closed her book by then, abandoning it beside her on the couch as she slid down onto the floor beside Rose and the cats.</p><p>"Fifteen minutes, but that's hardly the point, is it?" Rose said, slowly sitting up so that one cat slipped down into her lap. The other bolted as soon as she moved, skidding through into the kitchen and out of sight.</p><p>"Rose," Kanaya said sternly; Rose was only half listening by then, slumped forward onto the coffee table. "Why are you being so dramatic?"</p><p>"This is <i>not</i> me being dramatic. Might I remind you that when I was thirteen I decided to exclusively wear black lipstick to spite my mother, who, as it turned out, could not have cared less about my poor choice of cosmetics?"</p><p>"Bringing that up in the year 2020 is the definition of dramatic."</p><p>"No, dramatic is the intense tantrum I had when said mother forced me to use my equally dramatic black nail polish on my twelve year old brother. He only asked because he knew it would annoy me," Rose said, lifting her head back up.</p><p>"I know, you had an incredibly difficult and traumatizing childhood at the hands of your loving mother, right down to the injustice of being required to, on occasion, share your belongings with your brother. Now stop being impudent and explain this adult tantrum I've been forced to witness."</p><p>Rose sighed again.</p><p>"I have seen endless - and I mean endless - photos of people baking bread and I am seething because participating in this worldwide trend is so far beyond my abilities that I wouldn't even know where to start."</p><p>Kanaya was silent for so long that Rose had to stretch out a leg and prod her with a toe to check she hadn't fallen asleep.</p><p>"Rose. Light of my life, I do truly love you but that is the single most dramatic thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth, and I knew you during both your <i>Twilight</i> and <i>Brontë</i> phases."</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div><span class="black">-- <span class="dirk">timaeusTestified [TT]</span> began pestering <span class="dave">turntechGodhead [TG]</span> at 18:33 --</span><p>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Don't ask questions because the answers will all be revealed in time, but what kind of books do you read?</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: i dont read books dude what do you think i am some kind of huge fuckin nerd<br/>TG: because im the opposite<br/>TG: not only was i on varsity track in high school right<br/>TG: i was the fucking captain<br/>TG: so contrary to everything you ever heard get said about me because im totally sure you heard a lot<br/>TG: this guy was a total jock</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Congratulations, I also peaked in high school. You seriously don't read books?</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: well i did but then i boycotted the hobbit in middle school and it was all downhill from there yknow like that was a slippery slope down into being a guy who doesnt read books<br/>TG: sometimes i read roses fanfics so i can write her totally obnoxious comments<br/>TG: and sometimes i read karkats fanfics so i can write him totally obnoxious comments<br/>TG: his are way better in case youre wondering<br/>TG: rosies are good but she uses too many words<br/>TG: and yeah ironic coming from me i know but like get to the fuckin point lalonde<br/>TG: but im p sure the last book i read was definitely for english class<br/>TG: why</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: I said don't ask questions. Roxy would be so disappointed.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: yeah shes disappointed in me for sure but its more a personality thing not for your totally made up and untrue reasoning<br/>TG: who wouldnt be disappointed by all this</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: I sure know I am. What about the other two?</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: rez is blind so shes all about print media<br/>TG: cant get enough<br/>TG: devours entire newsstands for fun<br/>TG: shes the only thing keeping the magazine industry afloat in the twenty first century<br/>TG: karkat will read anything if its got a buff dude and a smokin babe on the cover</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Dave, I've already been in this Walmart for thirty six minutes. Cut the crap and answer the question so I can do something nice for you and your friends.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: okay okay the rez part was bs<br/>TG: she does audiobooks obviously</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: And K?</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: buff dudes and smokin babes</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Dave.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: what<br/>TG: i know i make a lot of shit up<br/>TG: like its definitely my modus operandi and we all figured that out by the time i was like six and telling all the other first graders that you were best buds with snoop<br/>TG: but you seriously think thats as far as id go if i was adlibbing<br/>TG: as if fooling you into thinking karkat was into publicly acceptable softcore porn was the height of comedy because hes not a forty year old woman<br/>TG: i shit you not<br/>TG: if theres a sexy lady a shirtless bro or any combination of the two or more on the cover hell read it<br/>TG: hes already told me that when he dies i have to <br/>TG: a wipe his browsing history like any bro would<br/>TG: and b go down to the library and ask them to delete his account</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: You better not be sassing me. I've already put three in the cart.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: would i sass you to your face</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Yes.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: ok so i would</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Ask if anyone needs anything specific while I'm here.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: rez says tampons<br/>TG: hang on shes sending me a photo of the box<br/>TG: <span class="terezi">V4GPLUGS.png</span><br/>TG: its gotta be exactly those</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Does she really have her phone set up to translate everything into leetspeak?</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: no she does it manually<br/>TG: dont ask<br/>TG: but im serious<br/>TG: its gotta be those boxes so she can tell them apart<br/>TG: i need coffee la croix and normal tylenol by which i mean extra strength tylenol</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Shit, I should've asked about your script earlier. I'm already picking up Jake's while I'm out.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: all g i filled one just before we came up<br/>TG: hang on karkats sending me a grocery list he says theres shit you dont have<br/>TG: <span class="karkat">Screenshot_FUCKINGWHITEPEOPLEANDTHEIRSPICEDEFICIENCY.png</span></span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Oh come the fuck on, I scrounged him up some cumin last week. It expired before I even met Jake, but it was there.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: <span class="john">IMG_041320.jpg</span><br/>TG: john says he was feeling left out so he sent me this to send to you<br/>TG: told me it was important so its obviously not</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Yeah, it's him flipping me off.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: psych i watched him take it</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Tell him I said happy birthday. You've got maybe twenty minutes if you decide you need anything else.</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dave">TG: he says thanks for the gift<br/>TG: later bro</span>
  <br/>
  <span class="dirk">TT: Tight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span class="black">-- <span class="dirk">timaeusTestified [TT]</span> ceased pestering <span class="dave">turntechGodhead [TG]</span> --</span>
</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>"I didn't say thanks! I didn't not say thanks but I'm pretty sure I said what the fuck before I said thanks," John pointed out.<p>He'd been reading the conversation over Dave's shoulder, mostly to be as deliberately annoying as possible, but also because Dave had started out by narrating everything then gone silent as the back and forth progressed. </p><p>"That counts," Dave said, shoving him backwards into his own corner of the couch.</p><p>"But what am I supposed to do with it?"</p><p>"I dunno, man. Welcome to the family, we've all got piles of shit from each other that no one knows what to do with."</p><p>That explained some of the more questionable things he'd seen lying around Roxy's house, at least.</p><p>As far as birthdays stuck at home went, this one had been pretty good. It was definitely better than the year Jade collapsed of excitement halfway through a game of musical chairs, and way less embarrassing than the year Dad had forced him to invite his entire fifth grade class to his party just because it was the nice thing to do. Both of those were a million miles better than the last birthday he'd had back at home in Seattle, and he was more than kind of glad that was a fuzzy memory.</p><p>Suddenly, the living room lights went out at the same time John felt Dave's elbow press in between two of his ribs; the jab was followed by another, then a third, until Dave had wriggled his way across the couch, into his space, and forced him down into the rug instead.</p><p>From behind them in the kitchen, his dad and Roxy burst into the middle of the living room carrying a cake each, with what looked like a full twenty four candles shared between them. John grinned when he saw the cakes, one decorated with far more finesse then the other, the fight for couch real estate all but forgotten.</p><p>"Wow, John," Dave said sarcastically; he'd flipped himself right way up on the couch again just so he could press a big toe into John's ribs. "Your mom lets you have two cakes?"</p><p>"Shut up, Dave," he said, driving the point of his elbow into Dave's shin. </p><p>They were all singing by then, the cakes set down on the coffee table in front of him. Roxy stepped around him and swatted Dave's legs aside so he made room for her to sit down. Karkat and Terezi were sharing the large armchair, a comfortable pile of limbs tangled in at least two different blankets they'd found around the living room. His dad, like always, was standing kind of awkwardly in the middle of the room, watching closely for his reaction to the traditional birthday cake presentation.</p><p>"Should I blow them out, or?" John asked once the song was over. </p><p>It seemed like a bad idea, given the circumstances.</p><p>Instead, he wafted at the candles, furiously waving his hands back and forth in front of the cakes in an attempt to extinguish the celebratory flames. When he realised that his failure had Karkat in hysterics, head buried under a blanket as Terezi jabbed him with her pointy elbows to keep him under control, he took in a deep breath and blew out every candle across the two cakes.</p><p>"Happy birthday, Johnny," Roxy said from over his shoulder, ruffling up his hair. "Dad decided that we definitely needed two cakes so that everyone had like, four slices each, so I tried to copy his frosting process and that's why that one looks so wonky," she said, pressing a kiss to his left temple. "It's definitely Dad's buttercream, so it's still the food of the Gods and everything, it's just fuck ugly."</p><p>"Like Dave," John nodded serenely, taking the knife his Dad was holding out for him.</p><p>"Yeah, total snack over here," Dave pitched in. Suddenly, he was sitting on the floor as well, right up by John's elbow. "That's what you meant, yeah?"</p><p>"Well I meant that you were ugly, but you can stay in denial if it makes you feel better," he said, lining up the knife to slice the cake into six large, equal pieces. </p><p>"Could be worse, I could be Karkat-ugly."</p><p>"Hey!" Terezi exclaimed from her armchair. "Karkat might be ugly but he is not the ugliest. Is he?"</p><p>"He's pretty up there," John said, grinning as he held out two small plates. "Who wants cake?"</p><p>Everyone wanted cake, because everyone always wanted cake when it was Dad's cake. Especially when it was Dad's cake. John had a lifetime of eating his Dad's cakes under his belt and they were still probably the best he'd ever had; judging from his friends' reactions, they all seemed to agree. He dished out the oversized portions from Roxy's cake first, the mess of buttercream ending up on cheeks and noses until it all disappeared in mere minutes. </p><p>He sat on the floor in the middle of it all, surrounded by almost all the people he cared about most in the world, and grinned.</p><p>It was the grin of a boy who knew exactly how to prank his entire family at once. </p><p>"Monopoly?"</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>Even though it had been an unseasonably warm day so far upstate, the temperature had dropped back close to freezing as soon as the sun had gone down. He hadn't been to Dave's house in years and it was still as weird and impressive as he remembered, even after spending the better part of six weeks at his dad's house. <p>As much as he knew it was unnecessary, he hadn't been able to avoid worrying about Terezi as she wandered cautiously around the unfamiliar space all afternoon. </p><p>He'd sat up in bed as she paced back and forth between there and the ensuite, to the door, back to the bathroom, then back again, mentally mapping out the entire room they were staying in. It was John's room now, technically, and had been for a few years but everyone still referred to it as Dirk's. </p><p>There had been a brief argument about who would sleep where; Dave wanted his own bed, but John wouldn't sleep in Rose's in case it was <i>full of weird booby traps or haunted or cursed</i>. They'd settled on John bunking in with Dave to avoid anyone needing to use Rose's room, so he and Terezi could have their own. </p><p>Karkat wasn't about to complain. </p><p>He was in bed under almost too many blankets, a heavy woollen number he'd stolen from downstairs spread out on top of the comforter to keep as much heat in as possible. Lying curled up against Terezi with his head on her chest and one leg hooked over hers, he was almost too comfortable. </p><p>"I do not actually think you are ugly," she said as her hand ran through his hair, nails lightly scratching at his scalp. </p><p>Karkat snorted, eyes closed.</p><p>"I'm maybe a two. Three on a good day," he said. </p><p>"Yes, but you hate yourself so we will add five points to counteract a lifetime of self-loathing, so that makes you a seven or an eight," Terezi said. "And that is very impressive." </p><p>"Bullshit," he mumbled against her. </p><p>"It is true. You are maybe short but you are not ugly and even if you were, I would never know."</p><p>"Hey, not short," he protested lazily. "I'm five six, that's average for my shade of brown. Any taller and I might as well be a shitty white guy with a complex about using my height to compensate for my dick." </p><p>"You are definitely shorter than John," Terezi said. Suddenly, she shifted in bed, turning to face him instead of the ceiling. "Oh my <i>God</i>, is John white?"</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"It is a bit like when you know someone but you have known them for too long to tell them you never learnt their name," she explained. "He's white, isn't he?"</p><p>"Yeah. Most of our friends are."</p><p>"Hm."</p><p>"I know," he said. "Jade has a tan that could almost convince you she's not, but she's as white as the rest of them."</p><p>"Sollux?"</p><p>"Mayonnaise."</p><p>"Okay," Terezi frowned. "What about Kanaya?"</p><p>"White. But she's the kind of white the majority of Americans assume should be brown."</p><p>"Well that is all very depressing."</p><p>"Yeah, well, lucky for us they're all five inches either side of six foot," Karkat said, moving just enough to adjust his cheek against her chest. "We can use them as physical shields in a riot."</p><p>"You would start the riot," she pointed out.</p><p>"My riot days are dead and fucking buried," he mumbled. He tilted his head up to kiss the tip of her chin, shifting the arm he'd had lying across her up to hold her cheek as he did; he moved it back down again and let his hand rest against the side of her chest, as if it were an accident that he'd stopped where he had. "I should write a book."</p><p>The words, as usual, were out before he even registered that he was saying them. They were followed by a silence long enough to hear a loud crash from the next room over, one that they both ignored, but the distraction was long enough that he realised he didn't want to retract what he'd said. At all.</p><p>"Ooh, a sexy book?" Terezi asked, her interest piqued. She wriggled down the bed until she was lying face to face with him, her forehead pressed against his and a hand on his chest.</p><p>"Maybe," he mumbled. "Maybe in parts."</p><p>"Could you write a sexy book without dying of embarrassment when you realised that real, live people were reading it?"</p><p>"Fifty fifty."</p><p>"What if I read it?"</p><p>"Significant drop. You've heard worse than a pseudo-woke attempt at modern new adult softcore romance out of my mouth."</p><p>"You will obviously let Dave read it," she said matter-of-factly.</p><p>"He's got the majority audience feedback so I'd be a fucking idiot not to get his opinion. It means I'll probably have to read it to him like a fucking kindergarten teacher complete with bathroom breaks and naptime, but he'll read it regardless of whether he wants to or not."</p><p>"Ooh, what if your mom would like to read it? She would definitely ask you for a signed copy or three and she will mail them to your grandparents so you will have an immediate international audience."</p><p>"Do you want me to read you the first three chapters or not?" Karkat asked, even as he was already rolling over to pick up his phone from the bedside table.</p><p>"That depends, are the first three chapters sexy chapters?"</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>The arguments had gone on for weeks without resolution. Everyone knew what needed to happen and by the time late-May had rolled around, they were all desperate for intervention. <p>None of them knew how to fix the problem without making it worse for everyone. No one had any idea where to even start and Terezi's offer to take care of it all herself - however much she was joking - had gone down like the Titanic in a hailstorm. </p><p>Eventually, begrudgingly admitting defeat, Dirk had called Roxy for help.</p><p>"Who's next?"</p><p>Dirk grinned when Jake reached up and ran a hand through his own freshly trimmed hair, dusting the loose ends onto the grass. Roxy swatted at his back with her free hand to help with the clean up as she waved the clippers towards all the kids.</p><p>"It's a bit bleh," she said, picking a few hairs from the back of Jake's neck before she clapped his shoulder as an indication he could finally move safely. "But I'm not exactly the fancy stylist you boys are all so used to and you kinda get what you pay for here at Salon de Lalonde. And you're paying me shit, so shit it's gonna be."</p><p>"And yours costs how much in Euros?" Dirk asked, eyebrow raised, fighting the urge to start preening all the excess hair off Jake's shirt; every swipe he'd taken at his shirt had missed an obvious lock of hair.</p><p>"Pounds," Roxy corrected. "Come on, chop chop, you all complained about how you so totally needed haircuts so desperately that I gotta take time outta my hectic work schedule for you, and now that Momma's here you all changed your minds, huh?"</p><p>"Okay, me next," Terezi announced, following Hal over the lawn to the repurposed kitchen stool. "I would like an undercut but only on the left with half of it dyed fluro green. And I would also like a very big perm but only on the right."</p><p>"Salon de Crapshoot offers a buzz or a trim."</p><p>"Fine," Terezi huffed sarcastically, dragging out the word for emphasis as she settled into the chair. "Trim please. Do you also do fancy styling?" </p><p>"French braid or messy bun," Roxy offered. She dropped the clippers onto the grass and swapped them for scissors. </p><p>"Ooh, very fancy," Terezi mused. "French braid."</p><p>"Okay, as long as you keep your head still I can totally get a mostly straight line," Roxy said, despite the hair clip between her teeth. </p><p>Dirk tuned out of the conversation after that, watching on for a few minutes as Jake hurled a bald tennis ball down to the far end of the yard for Hal. He stared for long enough that Dave's sudden, unannounced presence beside him had startled him just enough that he visibly flinched at the realisation.</p><p>"You good?" Dirk asked, without turning.</p><p>Dave just grinned at him. Clad in one of Jake's old khaki work shirts with three buttons missing and his hair wrapped tightly in cling film, Dave was still waiting for the dye to process; he'd refused to cut his hair point blank, claiming that his usual guy back in Brooklyn would kill him over a botched at-home job.</p><p>A liberal application of silver hair dye, purchased online and applied by his mom in the kitchen after only a glance at the instructions, however, was perfectly acceptable to inner-city hipster barbers.</p><p>"Yeah, you should go check out the comments on my latest Insta post, do you have any idea how long people have been bitching about my hair? Like, we all know how I feel about my hair and yeah I guess it's mostly your fault it grows outta my head looking like this but apparently the fact it does means I should be running different colours through it every week or something," Dave explained. "And like yeah for the most part I'm not about that but if everyone else is out here ruining their hair I can suck it up and do it once, right? We're not counting the time John put food dye in my shampoo, by the way," he added. "I told Karkat he should ask Mom to give him like, a mohawk or something but he wasn't into it." </p><p>"You're not about to fry it all off, are you?" Dirk asked. He gestured to the plastic wrapped around Dave's head. </p><p>"Nah, it's just like, I dunno what it's called but it's just, like, conditioner with colour in it. I made Rose order it for me when I told her we were all having a big hair day. Mom said I should leave it in for like three hours or something," Dave shrugged. "I trust her." </p><p>"Obviously not enough to let her cut it," he pointed out with a grin. </p><p>"I've seen my own second grade photos, she's not going anywhere near me with scissors."</p><p>"Yeah, that was my fault," Dirk pointed out. "Yours too, might I add. You had a shitfit and thought it would be funny to keep moving when I told you not to, I almost took a finger off." </p><p>"Okay, but you shouldn't have told me not too. That's all on you, dude. Anyway, I'm gonna go find John," Dave said. "Later."</p><p>"Check downstairs." </p><p>It wasn't much longer until Roxy had worked her way through everyone else's hair. When she patted the empty stool impatiently, he sat down and let her rake a comb through his hair with far more force than he'd been expecting. </p><p>"Last time you did my hair," he started, trying not to flinch as she continued to prove exactly why Dave and Rose had always complained about their hair brushing experiences. "I came out of it with a mullet." </p><p>"No, it was a perfectly feathered, voluminous mullet and c'mon, you fuckin' loved it," Roxy said; he could almost hear her grinning.</p><p>"Look, no offense, but I think I'm way too old to pull that off these days."</p><p>"Oh, you definitely are, honey. So, I can trim it or I can buzz it like the others, your choice," she offered. </p><p>"Just trim it back. If it looks like shit, I have a literal storage box full of hats I can always wear until it grows back in." </p><p>"Ye of little faith," Roxy said sarcastically as she snipped the scissors loudly right by his ear. "The others all look fine." </p><p>"You say <i>fine</i>, and yeah, I mostly believe you, but you've ruined Jake's chances at a career in 1930s Hollywood for the foreseeable future. Will it grow back in about three weeks? Yes, because it's just hair. But until then it'll feel like I'm about to send him off to fight in the Pacific every time I look at him," Dirk pointed out as Roxy tried to straighten his head. </p><p>"Fuck, it's lucky none of us were born any earlier. Can you imagine him off fighting a war? He'd single-handedly charm his way through entire battalions then blast them from the inside." </p><p>"Hot," he agreed. </p><p>"You, on the other hand, would have been entirely useless to anyone's government at the time. Hold still." </p><p>"More like someone knew I'd be unstoppable and nerfed me with the affinity for dick," Dirk pointed out. "So, to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, how many grays are back there?"</p><p>"Enough you should probably go back to wearing the hats full time anyway, babe," Roxy said as she snipped at the hair on his crown. "Jokes, jokes," she laughed when he reached back to blindly swat at her wherever he could reach. "I mean, there's definitely a fuckton of grays back here, I don't want you to get your head up your own ass thinking there isn't."</p><p>"How long have I got, Doc?"</p><p>"A while yet, but at least they blend in for the most part. The same can't be said for your poor, poor husband."</p><p>"Hey, no sympathy necessary," Dirk said. "I feel like yeah, I'm more than somewhat biased here, but fuck me if the guy isn't the dictionary definition of getting better with age." </p><p>"Gross, dude."</p><p>Dirk grinned when Dave stepped back into view, deliberately standing in front of him to pull a disgusted face because Roxy was mid-way through trimming the hairline along his nape.</p><p>"Feral, right? This morning I even kissed him in the kitchen before you hauled your sorry ass out of bed."</p><p>"Oh c'mon, I eat there," Dave protested, folding his arms across his chest.</p><p>"There was even tongue."</p><p>"Way too much info, dude."</p><p>"Yeah? And how're your Tinder prospects looking this far upstate?" Dirk asked with a laugh, as Dave responded with a single raised eyebrow. </p><p>"Feral, but not in a good way," Dave replied as coolly as possible. </p><p>"Oh, baby, Tinder?" Roxy interjected in her best attempt at a disappointed tone. "Didn't I teach you anything about finding weirdos online?"</p><p>"Honestly? Not really, Mom," Dave said. "You kinda skimmed over it once or twice but like, we lived in the woods. Who was gonna bother trying to come abduct us all the way out here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere? And I found all my best weirdos online anyway, one of them is literally your stepson."</p><p>"Yeah, and his dad always warned him about the weirdos you find online."</p><p>It was a cheap shot, but fuck if Dirk wasn't prepared to take it.</p><p>"Not talking to the parent who defiled the entire kitchen this morning," Dave said. He waved a dismissive hand in Dirk's direction at the jab.</p><p>"Who did what in the kitchen?" </p><p>Dirk burst out laughing when Dave weaved his way out from under the arm Jake tried to wrap around his shoulders; the perplexed expression that followed was almost one of betrayal, the first time in years that Dave had rejected anything remotely resembling a hug.</p><p>"You two were, as the saying goes, canoodling in there," Dave pointed out.</p><p>"Is he talking about last week?" Jake asked as he dropped to sit down on the grass next to the dog.</p><p>"This morning," Dirk replied with a grin as Roxy tipped his head forward. </p><p>"Mom, please, please tell me this shit has been in my hair long enough," Dave said, already backing across the lawn towards the house. "I'm fucking off again either way, so goodbye, farewell, and get fucked to you all, and I'll see you when my hair looks totally fucking sick and on trend unlike yours. And yeah, the yours here means all of you, Dave out."</p><p>The kitchen door slammed loudly enough behind him that Hal barked twice in response, until Jake wrestled him into lying on the grass instead as a distraction.</p><p>"Pretty sure we didn't do any canoodling in there last week," Dirk said, lifting his head back up once Roxy removed her hand from the back of it; Jake grinned up at him from the lawn.</p><p>"How should I know? I just presumed we were fucking with him and made something up."</p><p>"There, done," Roxy announced, brushing at his shoulders. "It's shorter and a teeny bit more shit, but you've definitely had a haircut. And I can assure you that thanks to the two of you somehow managing to find a place for Johnny here in your nightmare hellhouse, there is gonna be so much canoodling in my kitchen tonight."</p><p>"Well that's just unsanitary," Jake said. "And exactly how a fellow might happen to scald himself on a freshly boiled kettle."</p><p>Dirk laughed again, loudly, when Jake lifted up his own arm to examine the small burn right by his elbow.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>no i dont know what dirk gave john for his birthday lmao</p><p>&lt;3 u, hope youre safe!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. [A6.6A0.3]: any nincompoop can catch a fish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which everyone is embarrassed for different reasons and no one loses.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>June/July, 2020</b>
</p><p>"Can we cut the bullshit just this once?"</p><p>Dave thought about the request for longer than was strictly necessary. Obviously, he could easily cut out the bullshit if he wanted, but he had no inclination to cut the bullshit just because Karkat asked him to cut the bullshit, even just once.</p><p>Even if it was his birthday.</p><p>"Hmm?" </p><p>Instead of responding like a normal person, Dave went for the somewhat obvious ploy of pretending that he hadn't heard the question.</p><p>"Why the fuck am I here, Dave?" Karkat scowled, evidently refusing to take the bait.</p><p>Dave couldn't see the scowl; he was too busy moving his wet laundry from the washer into the dryer. He couldn't see it, but he knew the scowl was there the same way he knew he was already on borrowed time with his shit attempt at a diversion - it was an inevitable truth of the universe in the exact same way that Karkat was so totally onto his ruse that if he didn't think of something in the next few seconds, they were fucked. </p><p>He pressed the door to the dryer closed with his knee and set it to run for the next hour or so; the time didn't matter, it was just a load of socks and underwear he'd run through the wash earlier to signal the beginning of the countdown.</p><p>"Because. Okay, so, I don't know how to tell you this, dude," Dave said, as he finally turned his back on the washing machine to face Karkat. "But considering we've been here for what feels like, I don't know, three years now with nothing going on, I still managed to be a huge asshole and a shit friend who didn't get you anything for your birthday."</p><p>"That's it? You dragged me into the laundry room and forced me to watch you fondle your own dirty underwear just so you could tell me that?" Karkat deadpanned in response, more unsurprised than disappointed.</p><p>"Yeah, sorry, dude," Dave said. He reached out though, hands on either side of Karkat's face, and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "You're still my best person, for real. I owe you big time," he mumbled. "And sorry again."</p><p>Before Karkat could say anything, and before he could remember just how hard Karkat hit when he was riled up, Dave spun him around with hands on his shoulders, then pulled him in close and covered his eyes.</p><p>"What the fuck? Dave, what the <i>fuck</i>?" Karkat protested, trying to wiggle free; Dave quickly moved to wrap one arm around him so he was pinned against his chest, all while keeping one hand clamped over his eyes. </p><p>"I said sorry already, jeez, relax," Dave pointed out as he dropped the hand from covering Karkat's eyes long enough to swap it for the scarf he'd put aside the night before. "I'm gonna let go because I need my other hand for a sec here so it'd be really cool if you didn't turn around and clock me in the face, right?"</p><p>"Sure, why not? It's not like I had any real plans for today anyway so let's lean into your dumbfuck kidnapping charade," Karkat said as he folded his arms across his chest, standing idly in the middle of the laundry room. "Who's scarf did you steal for this shit, because it's not even yours, you hack."</p><p>"Cute, you know my entire scarf collection?"</p><p>Maybe agitating him more wasn't the best idea, but he was running low on other options.</p><p>"No, but I do know your off-the-charts vanity level and you wouldn't be caught dead back home in something four hundred percent pure polyester, because God fucking forbid someone takes your photo on the street and all of a sudden you're being shunned online for your dubious fashion choices."</p><p>"Right?" Dave agreed. "Okay, how many fingers?" </p><p>He asked the question after turning Karkat around by the shoulders to face him, once he was satisfied that he'd tied the scarf tight enough that it wouldn't unwind itself as soon as they moved.</p><p>"One," Karkat said gruffly. "And we both know exactly which one it is because fuck me if you're not predictable, so how about you sit on it and go fuck yourself?"</p><p>"Maybe later," Dave said, swatting Karkat's hand down before spinning him again to lead him out of the laundry. "So would you just let anyone kidnap you or what?"</p><p>"If this was a real kidnapping and they wanted to talk to me this much, I'd ask them to just put me out of my misery. Where are we going?"</p><p>"Would it count as a real kidnapping if I lock you in the trunk for a few hours?"</p><p>"This is where I start begging you to beat me to death with a tube sock full of quarters," Karkat said, stumbling on the front step as Dave directed him out of the house; he pulled the door closed behind them and turned onto the lawn. "Fuck it, take my socks throttle me with them if it means I don't have to listen to you and your kidnapping master plans for another second."</p><p>"Careful what you wish for, man," Dave said. </p><p>He directed Karkat around the house through the shadows of sunset, walking him over the grass and carefully nudging Hal's overexcited weight aside before the dog ended up in the way; the last thing he needed was Hal ruining everything at the last second.</p><p>"What now? Dave? <i>Dave</i>, you fucking asshole, you can't just be all <i>hey let's fake a kidnapping</i> then abandon me in the middle of nowhere in Fuckoffsville, USA," Karkat shouted when Dave's hands dropped from his shoulders.</p><p>"I'm right here, relax," Dave said once he'd navigated around a few obstacles to end up standing back behind Karkat again. "Okay, sit down, there's a chair right there, like legit, you're not gonna end up on the ground," he went on, hands back on Karkat's shoulders. "Now close your eyes, yeah?" </p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Just do it!" Dave exclaimed with a laugh as he started untying the scarf from around Karkat's head. "Eyes closed?"</p><p>"Hang on, let me roll them with the force of a thousand suns first," Karkat said. "Now they're closed."</p><p>"Really?"</p><p>"Really."</p><p>At the sound of Karkat's resigned sigh, Dave pulled his own chair closer and perched on the edge of it, then finished loosening the scarf; he dumped it beside him and leant forward once more, wrapping Karkat tightly in both arms from behind. </p><p>"Okay, you can open them now," he said, resting his chin on Karkat's left shoulder. "Happy birthday, dude," he announced.</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>The first lot of swearing, an instinctual response to the scene in front of him, fell out of his mouth in a combination of English and Urdu that meant almost nothing to anyone the words were directed at; Dave, still hanging over his shoulder with arms clinging tightly around him, just laughed and laughed. <p>There was so much going on in the backyard that Karkat didn't even know where to look first. He was sitting on one of the chairs from the good dining room, the one that had turned into Terezi's study as the weeks Upstate dragged on. More from the set were lined up on either side of him, and when he managed to turn around in Dave's death grip, he realised there were even more chairs lined up behind the first row. Dave loosened his arms at the movement and sat back in his own chair, sinking just low enough to look casual as he crossed one knee up over the other and folded his arms over his own chest; the longer Karkat stared at him, the more facial real estate his shit-eating grin took up.</p><p>Terezi was sitting on Dave's left, and Jake on his right. Both of them were grinning just as hard but seemed less insufferable for it; Dave's always punchable face was almost begging for it. </p><p>"Down in front," Dave shouted suddenly, hands either side of his mouth like a megaphone. </p><p>"Some of us can't see!" Terezi added with a loud cackle.</p><p>A loud noise from the kitchen patio caused Karkat to jump back around in his seat, his attention drawn to John. </p><p>John, who had apparently appeared out of thin air while his back was turned.</p><p>John fucking Egbert was going to serenade him.</p><p>"Okay everyone, shut up and listen," John said from where he was sitting cross-legged on the concrete, with his keyboard resting on the low cement wall surrounding the patio. He started playing something unfamiliar over the sound of an electronic beat coming from one of his keyboard presets. "Thanks, now that I've got your attention I just want you to know that this is totally an exercise in seeing just how embarrassing we can all be, mostly," he went on, fingers blindly moving over the keys. "But also, like, I just want to point out that we didn't do anything like this for my birthday because I told Dave not to, so don't feel bad or anything, okay?" John said, adjusting the microphone in front of him as he spoke. "So this is where I'd dim the stage lights if we had any, but we don't, and it's kind of dark anyway but not too dark yet which is why we decided to do this now, but anyway," he paused, long enough to switch his keyboard to drum-mode and start a drumroll. "It's time to welcome to the patio one-time VMA nominee, Di-Stri!"</p><p>Scattered applause echoed across the yard from behind him, along with a loud whoop from Terezi, and Karkat wanted nothing more than to evaporate into the ether as the kitchen door flew open.</p><p>Dirk strode out of the house in full Di-Stri mode, complete with his infamous sunglasses, hat, and a shit-eating grin identical to the one Karkat could still feel drilling into the back of his skull.</p><p>He raised the microphone, and launched straight into <i>Narrative Control</i>.</p><p>Karkat sunk down in his chair, more embarrassed than he had been in years. He was grinning, but embarrassed nonetheless, and had no idea where to look or what to do. Terezi cheered again and Dave's arms clung to him once more, wound tightly around his shoulders as if to make sure he didn't run. </p><p>The beat went on, a track from Dirk's final EP, and Karkat knew damn well that he'd never performed it live before; it was from the surprise release last October and didn't even have a physical release beyond an extremely limited vinyl run. </p><p>He owned one of the fifty copies, but still.</p><p>As the song came to an end, the music faded out and Dirk sat down on the top step, opposite Karkat, and just grinned.</p><p>"So," he said slowly, taking a minute to catch his breath. "Welcome to the <i>Ultimate Self</i> twenty-twenty tour, where the only stop is my queer as shit backwoods manor house and the only thing straight around here is the fact that Cal's always ready to drag you straight to hell. Tonight's only show features yours truly on the stage and Egbert on audio control, with backup performances by Dave and Terezi on long-term distraction, Jake as my emotional support slash groupie, and of course, my main man Cal," Dirk said, as he whipped Cal out from somewhere behind him to sit on his lap. "I'm gonna take a break here because holy shit am I too old for this and I need a minute, but let's say it's intentional and designed to give you time to pick your top three for me to do before this party is over. In the meantime, I'm gonna tell you a story. Sound good?"</p><p>Karkat nodded dumbly. What was he supposed to say? </p><p>"Yeah," he eventually managed, nodding weakly, as he leant back into Dave's continued hold on him.</p><p>"Cool," Dirk laughed. "So, story time. Once upon a time in the vast kingdom of Upstate New York, an idiot at the DMV decided my kid was old enough to pilot a vehicle regardless of what I thought. As part of his sweet sixteenth, I got him a shit car and a trip to the city to accompany me to a gig. And while our boys' weekend didn't exactly start off how I'd planned because <i>someone</i> let the cat out of the bag at a pretty inopportune moment," Dirk paused for a moment, long enough to throw a loving glance at Jake in the second row. "We actually took some time off the business shit to hang out with some kid that my kid had found online."</p><p>"I wonder how that went," Terezi hissed over his shoulder, stifling her laughter as she did.</p><p>"And it was honestly, for years after that, the worst attempt at meeting someone for the first time I'd ever witnessed. It's not every day you meet an online friend for the first time and let yourself go into anaphylactic shock to maintain your coolkid persona, is it?"</p><p>"Boo!" Dave shouted, still grinning, as he leant his head against Karkat's.</p><p>Despite himself, Karkat reached a hand up to pat Dave's cheek, somewhat less violently than he'd thought about doing.</p><p>"Look, it was a disaster is what I'm saying," Dirk laughed. "But Dave's always had this way of denying that his best friends are even his best friends and I think it's got something to do with his deep rooted hero complex and continual attempts to avoid hurting anyone's feelings, but with Egbert here officially part of the family now I think we're all beyond pretending you're not in that role. And since we're all here, we thought it'd be a novel idea to get you front row seats for this backyard gig."</p><p>Another cheer from Terezi rang out from the chair behind him as Dirk stood up, and wound Cal's gangly limbs around his own neck to keep him upright on his shoulder. Karkat had just nodded again, still dumbstruck by the effort that apparently everyone had put into organising the event, just for him. </p><p>"<i>The Valediction</i>," he said suddenly.</p><p>"Old school, huh?" Dirk replied. "I can do that. John, you got it?"</p><p>"Got it!" John replied from behind his keyboard, laptop perched on his knee. "Okay, ready when you are."</p><p>"Hit me."</p><p>As the backing track started up and the sounds of <i>The Ventriloquist's Valediction</i> echoed across the backyard, Karkat realised that for as much as he wouldn't fight it if a bear burst out of the woods and tried to disembowel him on the spot, there was no way he could ever top a private concert on the gift-giving front.</p><p>"Just so you know, for the lifetime record you're keeping, I've never been this mortified in my life and I once got expelled from middle school for starting a fistfight with my eighth grade crush," Karkat mumbled as he tipped his head back just far enough to witness Dave's reaction. </p><p>"Love you, too, bro," Dave replied with a grin and a loud, wet kiss to his cheek. "Now shut up and enjoy the literal fantasy come to life."</p><p>Karkat shut up.</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>Back in March when he'd first been told to pack up and expect to be out of the office for two weeks, he'd laughed directly in the face of both his boss, and his boss's boss, when they'd expressed concern over his ability to successfully work from home.<p>Then he'd realised they were serious. They forced him into a meeting with I.T. after that, and the series of meetings that followed with increasingly higher levels of I.T. security only served as evidence that they still didn't trust him.</p><p>He'd reminded them that his work laptop was routed remotely through their servers anyway and didn't use his home internet connection, and they hadn't appreciated it; his boss forced him into a medical checkup before leaving for the two weeks, even though he'd had his regular bloods taken just two days earlier.</p><p>Five months later, and he had a list scrawled on the freezer door with all the reasons working from home was so much better than working at the office.</p><p>He didn't need to wear a suit. Or a tie. Or even pants. He didn't have to ride into work with his boss's assistant who still drove him in and out of the office every day of the fucking week. He could sleep in, or even just fuck around whenever he wasn't actively in online meetings; besides, he'd been banned from saying anything unless asked within three days of work from home because of his repeated complaints about their program of choice. </p><p>Zoom could suck a dick. Two dicks.</p><p>He'd done far worse, with far less permission, and it was completely fucking depressing that the CIA seemed to have entirely forgotten about his long-standing, off the books, criminal record.</p><p>"Boo," Aradia announced as she set down his 40oz HydroFlask, topped up with water and ice, alongside his daily pill organiser. "You know, like ghosts and shit."</p><p>As he took a swig of water to knock back his midday dose, Sollux glanced down the front of her tank top; Aradia had positioned herself on the opposite side of his desk, between his second and third monitors, and he would have been an asshole not to look when she'd so obviously set him up.</p><p>"This is a trap," he said, sliding his bulky headphones off and dumping them unceremoniously onto his keyboard.</p><p>"Ooh," Aradia replied as he stood up and stepped around the desk between them. "Good guess, Agent Captor, but if it was a trap I would have slapped you in the face for being so stupid that you fell for it," she said, grinning when he took her hand and dragged her onto the couch.</p><p>The number one advantage to working from home was Aradia.</p><p>Aradia, straddling his lap as she kissed him until he couldn't breathe, had saved him from himself more times than she knew. With her so close for so long, Sollux knew he was too reliant on the reassurance of her mere presence and had no idea how he was ever going to go back to the corporate routine he'd been shoehorned into over time. He kissed her in return, long and deep, struggling to convey the idea that he'd follow her to the ends of the universe and back; she knew, though. She always knew. </p><p>She kissed him again, softly, then sat back on his lap.</p><p>She was staring right through his soul.</p><p>And it was so fucking predictable, but he attributed that to the fact he didn't have the mental bandwidth to register anything beyond her presence, that he just stared back at her with his hands resting, so still, on her thighs.</p><p>"Not a trap?" Sollux asked again, just to be sure, because between the work from home order and the summer heat they were already stripped down to the bare minimum.</p><p>"If it was, you'd know," she replied, hands peeling off her tank top before reaching for the bottom hem of his t-shirt. She paused, fabric bunched in her fist, when his breath caught on the way out at the feel of her fingers on bare skin. "Good or bad?"</p><p>"Good," Sollux replied. "Good, good, fucking great," he mumbled as he pushed her hands aside to remove the shirt himself.</p><p>When his computer started ringing a few minutes later, a call from one boss or another to make sure he was still alive, Sollux was too lost in Aradia to care; she called out to Alexa for music to drown out the noise, and he just kissed her again, so softly, something in his broken mind unable to let any possibility go.</p><p>"Not a trap," she whispered, hands on his cheeks, still staring right through his soul.</p><div class="center">
  <p>+++</p>
</div>Dave couldn't exactly remember when it was that he'd woken up to find Jake missing. It was sometime in May, he was pretty sure, because the snow had all melted and the weather was getting better, but the change in weather itself hadn't given him any kind of reason to explain the sudden disappearance.<p><i>Yeah</i>, Dirk had said when he finally asked the question. <i>He does that sometimes</i>.</p><p>Dave had stared at Dirk's phone screen when he slid it across the kitchen island; a tiny dot flashed in the middle of the empty map.</p><p><i>I don't track him like some psychotic, overbearing helicopter husband</i>, Dirk had explained. <i>Just when he decides to go for a casual overnight jaunt into the woods so I know where to send the search and rescue team if he doesn't come home</i>.</p><p>Then, one Saturday in late July, Jake had invited him along.</p><p>"Hey, Pops," Dave said as he jumped over a fallen tree, taking a few running steps to catch up to Jake. "So, few questions I didn't ask before we left, but what are the chances there's something out here that wants to kill us?"</p><p>"Are you regretting not taking up my offer for a shotgun of your own?" Jake asked, adjusting the strap of his pack from pressing into his shoulder.</p><p>"Look, I might be a country boy but I'm not that country, dude," Dave snorted; he could see the second shotgun strapped to the side of Jake's backpack, where it had gone as soon as he'd rejected the offer to carry it himself. "I mean like, y'know, foxes with rabies and shit, or ticks. Am I gonna wake up with fuckin' ticks all over my junk?"</p><p>"That depends, just don't dangle your junk in a bush and I'm sure you'll be dandy. You're more likely to find one in your hair," Jake shrugged. "You can have the shotgun anytime, you know."</p><p>Dave snorted at the poor choice of words.</p><p>"For the ticks?"</p><p>"Moreso the rabid foxes, but I suppose you could obliterate a tick with a shotgun if you were accurate enough."</p><p>"Because that's totally not an overreaction," he scoffed as they came to a stop by a small clearing. Hal barked loudly, scaring a flock of birds out from the surrounding trees as he ran excited circles around the campsite and sniffing everything he could reach. </p><p>"Here we are," Jake announced. "Home away from home." He dropped his pack onto the ground and looked around, as if he was expecting to find everything waiting for him; when he discovered a battered old saucepan behind a tree stump, holding it up triumphantly, Dave realised that it was unbelievably likely that there was more than just a saucepan hidden in the clearing. "Right," he said, wiping dirt out of the pan with the hem of his shirt. "Make yourself useful and unpack the tent, would you? Oh, and when you're picking out which tree you want to piss on, choose one somewhere over that way, would you? We don't want to end up using piss sticks on the fire."</p><p>Jake had been disappearing into the woods for impromptu camping trips since he and Dirk had moved to New York, he explained over a dinner of leftovers they'd taken from the fridge. They were less than two miles from home but the quiet of the remote forest was enough to help him recharge from a life that was just as busy as it had been in California. Dave could understand; he loved the city, but going home relaxed him in ways that Brooklyn just couldn't.</p><p>Even after five straight months stuck upstate.</p><p>As the sun fell, the temperature dropped enough that after the humidity of the day the cooler air was something of a relief, even if the change was somewhat counteracted by the fact Hal had laid down and snuggled up between the two sleeping bags.</p><p>"Hey, Pops," Dave said. He rolled onto his stomach and commando crawled across the tent floor, pressing himself up against Jake's shoulder when he turned over again to lie on his back. "I got a game I wanna introduce you to," he explained.</p><p>"What kind of game then? Let's have it," Jake said, adjusting himself to lie with his right arm beneath his head and the other stretched out loosely around Dave's form.</p><p>"So, it's called <i>change a few app settings and see how long until I find someone that I went to high school with</i>," he said as he lifted the brightness on his phone so the screen was easier for Jake to see. "It's not, like, a super catchy title or anything but it's descriptive so it all balances out because you know what you're in for, right?"</p><p>"What am I looking at?"</p><p>"Tinder."</p><p>"This is Tinder?"</p><p>"Yeah," Dave said, starting to swipe on people and names he didn't recognise. "The secondary game here is to find the worst profiles and screenshot them to send to Karkat later, which let's be honest, most of the time that turns into the primary game pretty fuckin' quick because the shit some people put online, like fuck, imagine being that embarrassing."</p><p>"Why is it showing you all these gentlemen holding up fish in between the ladies?" Jake asked, lifting his head a little to get a closer look at the screen. "Hm, I say gentlemen but that last one was a bit of an obvious arsehole, if I do say so myself. And that one. Why do they all look like arseholes? And why are they all holding fish? Any nincompoop can catch a fish. Oh, there's one with a deer, that takes a bit more skill, I'll give him that much credit where it's due, but it's not exactly a recent photo, is it? It's not deer season."</p><p>Dave paused momentarily, his thumb hovering over the screen as he struggled to simultaneously process everything Jake had just said as well as figuring out how to respond to the initial question.</p><p>"I told it to show me everyone."</p><p>"The app?"</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>"For your game?"</p><p>Dave paused again. </p><p>Now or never. </p><p>"There's less fish guys in Brooklyn."</p><p>"And that's good?" Jake asked, turning his head to look at Dave. He seemed a little confused but Dave figured that had more to do with the way he was trying to make the point rather than the point itself. </p><p>"Yeah, I'm not into fish."</p><p>"Well you can catch a fish whenever you like but they're a bit more strict with deer season."</p><p>"Pops, c'mon, you're killing me here."</p><p>"Do you want to go fishing, Dave?" Jake asked puzzledly. "Are we actually talking about fishing or not?"</p><p>"You sure are, even though I'm over here trying to tell you it's less about the fish and more about the guys."</p><p>"Hang on, is this one of those dating apps?" </p><p>"Yeah, it's Tinder, I said that."</p><p>"Do I look like a man who needs a dating app? How should I know what they're called? Wait, steady on, are you dating a boy?"</p><p>"Why would I be on a dating app if I was already dating a guy, Pops?"</p><p>"You said it was a game!"</p><p>"Okay, scratch everything, restart this whole shebang and let me try again," Dave said, frustrated with himself as he clicked his phone screen back to sleep and dropped it onto his chest. "How old were you when you had your first girlfriend?"</p><p>"Oh fuck me, I don't know. Seventeen?" Jake said. "But quite honestly I could have missed an earlier memo on the girlfriend front. Why?"</p><p>"Okay, cool, I was sixteen. What about your first boyfriend?" </p><p>"Ah, now<i>that's</i> an interesting question. Twenty? No, twenty one. Oh, he was lovely. Mind you, it surprised the bejeezus out of me it was happening," Jake went on. "A very different time, back then."</p><p>"Okay, cool. I was sixteen," Dave said, repeating himself as he tipped his head up to look at Jake as he waited for a response.</p><p>He'd take anything, as long as it didn't involve the word fish.</p><p>"Both in the same year? That must've been a rough time," he said after a moment. "And here I was starting to think you had more in common with your John than with me in that department."</p><p>"Nah, just. Awkward as fuck, you know me," Dave said. He rolled onto his right shoulder and threw an arm over Hal, burying his face in the dog's fur as Jake ruffled the top of his faded silver hair. "I told Bro back in February and he's the only one I've actually. Like, told. Come out to, with my words, like a big boy, you know? The way I see it he's been flipping his proverbial shit in silence for six months so the least I can do is tell you so you guys can talk shit about me behind my back."</p><p>"Oh, we'd never."</p><p>"You totally will though," he said. </p><p>"Maybe just a little bit," Jake said with a gentle laugh. "You're quite a funny character sometimes, you know that?"</p><p>"Yeah, it's a pretty central facet of my award winning personality," Dave said, finally looking up from the dog when the worst of the moment had blown over. "Do you wanna look at more fish guys with me? Pick out some hells of shit profiles to bombard Karkat with later?"</p><p>"Oh, absolutely. I might just go for a quick whizz first if you don't mind," Jake said as he sat up, patting Dave's head as he did. "And Dave, before I forget," he went on. </p><p>"Yeah?" Dave asked. He wasn't expecting a long conversation out of Jake but he could deal with a few questions. </p><p> "If you need to take a midnight shit don't forget to bury it."</p><p>Jake always knew just the right thing to say; unfortunately, even after all these years, his timing was still nothing short of a spectacular crapshot in the dark.</p><p>"Yeah, I might just, like, hold it until we get home," Dave snorted. "Gonna be honest, didn't consider the possibility I'd have to shit in a hole when we were packing," he said as Jake brushed his bangs back and kissed his forehead. </p><p>"I probably should've mentioned it. Would you like me to dig you a hole while I'm up in case you have a shit-related emergency?"</p><p>The offer was pure Jake.</p><p>"Yeah, okay," Dave agreed. "Hey, love you, Pops."</p><p>"You too, Dave."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this was an incredibly fun one to do because, i mean, c'mon. a private birthday gig and a camping trip? dude. fun. they all need it.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>love u all, and as always, see the comments for reply box commentary as well as the blog: twoperfectlittlefreaks.tumblr.com</p></blockquote></div></div>
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